Mapserver doesn't create map image

[b.veldkamp@…]

Sometimes MS doesn't create a map image, (no file is created in the tmp
directory) and the (html) output is an empty page with the output of "mapserv
-v" as a comment.
I can't find a clear pattern, sometimes it happens when I turn on a particular
layer, or when I zoom in to a certain area. Once I find condition that crashes
MS, it is reproducable though.
A temporary solution is to delete all the .qix index-files (I already tried
recreating them, but that made no difference).
I have tried MS versions 4.0 and 4.2.2, and both have this problem, version 3.6
worked properly.

[sdlime]

Have you checked your web access/error logs for any output? For normal 
MapServer CGI execution the version information is the first thing output as 
part of processing a template. By that time images *should* have been created. 
This will be almost impossible to debug unless you can come up with a test case.

Steve

[b.veldkamp@…]

Nothing special in Apache's logfiles...
192.168.0.32 - - [17/Aug/2004:13:47:14 +0200] "GET
/vloop/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=../pag/vloop.map&layer=route&layer=landuse&zoom=2
HTTP/1.1" 200 951 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6)
Gecko/20040113"

And in the MS logfiles (note: "normal execution" is missing):
Tue Aug 17 13:48:45 2004,1691,192.168.0.32,vl,0,172329.357920 438926.688000
196177.642080 453219.312000,-1.000000 -1.000000,landuse route
,msSearchDiskTree(): Unable to access file. Unable to open spatial index for
/project/vloop/www2004/cgi-bin/../pag/../dat/plaatsnaam.qix. In most cases you
can safely ignore this message, otherwise check file names and permissions. <br>
msSearchDiskTree(): Unable to access file. Unable to open spatial index for
/project/vloop/www2004/cgi-bin/../pag/../dat/beken.qix. In most cases you can
safely ignore this message, otherwise check file names and permissions. <br>
msSearchDiskTree(): Unable to access file. Unable to open spatial index for
/project/vloop/www2004/cgi-bin/../pag/../dat/landuse.qix. In most cases you can
safely ignore this message, otherwise check file names and permissions. <br>

When I leave out layer=landuse, it works, so it seems there is something going
wrong there. Landuse consists of four separate shapefiles (none of which has an
index (qix)).

I removed these four layers one by one, and it came down to a layer used to
display placenames, defined as:
LAYER
  CLASS
    LABEL
      ANTIALIAS true
      COLOR 128 128 128
      FONT arial
      MAXSIZE 18
      MINSIZE 7
      SIZE 10
      TYPE truetype
    END  # LABEL
  END  # CLASS
  DATA plaatsnaam
  LABELCACHE on
  LABELITEM naam
  NAME landuse
  SYMBOLSCALE 150000
  TYPE point
END

When I changed "TYPE point" into "TYPE annotation" it worked again. Am I missing
something in this layer definition?

Berend

[sdlime]

Berend: Your landuse layer doesn't have colors or symbols defined for it yet 
you have it set as a POINT layer. If MapServer can't render points then it's 
not going to label them...

Marking as invalid.

Steve

[b.veldkamp@…]

I always thought mapserver would take a default symbol if nothing was defined...
So, maybe some sort of error message or warning from MS would be appropriate in
these cases.

Berend

[sdlime]

There is a default symbol but no default color.

Steve